The Devil Wears Prado
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: AU  becasue I'm going for a record here  Dean wants to work at Auto-Nation magazine, but ends up at Runway as Castiel's second assistant. Castiel is scary, and Gabriel just wants sugar. Destiel  eventual Sam/Gabriel  Title from Serendipity
1. Chapter 1

Dean really really wishes he'd gotten an interview at Auto-Nation. But no, the one job he manages to even get called in for is personal assistant to, he checks the piece of paper, Castiel Novak, editor in chief of 'Runway' prissy assed fashion magazine extraordinaire.

He makes his way through the warren of Perspex walled offices, catching glimpses of racks of clothing, massive glossy photos and conference rooms filled with oddly dressed people with perfect hair.

Oh yeah, he totally doesn't belong here.

There are two desks outside of the office he's been directed to. One is vacant, the other is occupied by a short, roundish guy with long blond hair and a pointed nose, which wrinkles when Dean brushes by him.

"Hi, I'm here for an interview with..." He breaks off as the guy darts into his personal space and inhales deeply.

"You've had a cinnamon bun." He says accusingly, then turns his mouth into an extravagant frown.

"I'm...sorry?" Dean tries.

"You should be." He snaps, picking up a folder and tapping it fiercely on the desk. "If I have to suffer the sugar embargo to look presentable then so should you." He looks Dean's cheap suit pants and button down over, probably assessing their cost, style and appropriateness and coming up with zero's all round.

"You want to be Castiel Novak's second assistant?"

"Not really...but hey, money, foot in the door...it's worth trying." Dean fidgets. "and I work hard, whatever I'm doing."

"Mmmmhmmm..." The guy keeps staring at him. "Gabriel, by the way."

"Dean."

"Buy better pants Dean...and learn to live without the little things, chocolate, sugar, a life outside of this place." He snatches a carrot stick from a plastic box on the desk, snapping it briskly. "My God I miss sex."

Dean can't really think of anything to say to that.

A beeping sound emanates from a blackberry on the desk. Gabriel picks it up and instantly pales.

"Shit, fuck!" he heaves open the glass door that leads to the rest of the office. "ETA on Novak pushed up to ten minutes!"

Dean actually hears a scream from somewhere beyond the other cubicles, and the secretary nearest to them whips her stilettos back on with a panicked look that could rival men on the gallows.

"That...not a good thing?" he hazards.

"Castiel was meant to be in the office in two hours time, not now...which means nothing is ready and he's probably going to kill at least three juniors with the power of his mind alone." Gabriel picks up a stack of glossy magazines and a bottle of water, running into the main office to spread them out on Castiel's desk and pour him a glass of water. Dean stands frozen in the entry way, only turning when he hears the elevator chime behind him.

A thin, pale man of about average height strides out, tosses his bag and trench coat onto Gabriel's desk and barely breaks stride on his way into the office.

"How hard is it to confirm an appointment?" He drawls as Gabriel backs away from the desk.

"I actually did..."

"I need the figures on last month's sales, excuses don't really interest me at this point." He ignores the water and instead switches on his computer and checks some notes. "I also want the preliminary layouts for September, the new drafts of that feature on the paratroopers and you have to get Mark on the phone immediately so I can sort out this mess with the advertisers...who's that?" the whole time he doesn't look up from the note pad in front of him and Gabriel twitches with anxiety.

"That is...well he's a candidate for the assistant job, but if you want me to..."

"The last person you selected was inappropriate so I suppose I'll have to conduct this interview myself, otherwise we'll never get anywhere now will we. Come in." This last is presumably directed at him, but Dean is frozen with nerves. Gabriel sweeps back past him, giving him a slight shove and grabbing another carrot stick as he taps frantically at the phone on his desk.

Dean steps into the office.

Castiel Novak is a terrifying man, perfectly turned out and funereal all the way to his thick black rimmed glasses, behind which his eyes are sharper than glass underfoot. He looks Dean over and his expression doesn't change, still pinched and disapprovingly blank.

"Yeah...so this was a mistake." Dean backs away a little and Castiel blinks, once. "I shouldn't even be..."

"You don't want this job?" Castiel asks archly.

"I don't think it wants me." Dean tries to look away from his eyes but he can't. "I'm not really..." He flounders.

"I see." Castiel drawls, removing his glasses and folding them. "You're not interested in working in fashion...you've never seen a copy of this magazine, and up until now you had absolutely no idea who I was or why you should care?"

"That's...all pretty true...yeah." Dean admits.

"And you have no sense of style." Castiel looks down at Dean's application.

"Well I don't think..."

"That wasn't a question."

Dean almost chokes on all the things he'd like to say but can't because a) he needs this job, any job and b) he's kind of afraid Castiel will wrap him up in a web or paralyse him and digest him later.

"I know I don't belong here...but I work really hard and all I need is a chance to..."

Castiel cuts him off.

"Gabriel, take Dan to the HR department to get his pass and then get him a company phone and my itinerary."

"It's actually..." Dean is swept away by Gabriel before he gets a chance to correct him on the subject of his name.

That night he relays the details of his first day of work to his girlfriend, Anna.

"You should have seen him with this editor guy, they suggested something about changing the fall spread to be something about New England and he just looked at him like something that should be popping out of the arc of the covenant and making everything all melty."

Anna raises an eyebrow but otherwise keeps to her stack of paperwork with a non-committal 'Hmmm."

"The other assistant is like, afraid of sugar, or something, which I can understand because if you're not so spindly you could stab someone with your hip bone you really don't belong there. I don't even think Castiel eats...unless he just sucks peoples blood or something." Dean grouses, flopping onto the futon and grumbling into the cushions mushed underneath his face.

His second day is not better.

"Ok, here's the rules." Gabriel explains while he drinks liquidised kale from a plastic flask and tries not to gag at the foul taste. "First assistant." He points at himself. "Takes care of all the important stuff around here...I also get to go on the Paris trip this year, so drinking this." He points at the grey green sludge in the flask "Totally worth it." He points at Dean. "You are the second assistant. One of us has to be here at ALL times, because if Castiel misses a call or needs Starbucks and can't get hold of either of us...well you won't just get fired, you'll be FIRED, like out of a cannon...into the sun. If the sun were a burning ball of 'never gonna work in this town again'" Gabriel gestures sharply to indicate the trajectory. "Any questions?"

"Yeah...what am I actually supposed to do?"

"Anything Castiel happens to want whenever he happens to want it." Gabriel beams without much humour. "You take the proofs for the magazine to his apartment every night, with his dry cleaning. You bring in his coffee in the morning...everything else, well then you are waiting on a whim my friend."

His phone chirrups.

"Annnnd that would be him now. Hang up his coat when he gets in and then...just wait, he'll find something for you to do."

Sure enough Castiel strides out of the elevator moments later, throws his coat onto Dean's desk, followed by his leather satchel and storms straight into his office without a backward glance.

Dean hangs up the coat and stashes the bag, waiting for further instruction.

"David." The stony voice comes from the inner office. "David." Slightly louder.

Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him.

"That's you dumbass."

Dean jerks to his feet and fumbles into the office.

"There you are, how many times do I have to scream your name before I penetrate that brain of yours." Without waiting for an answer he continues. "I need Zach on the phone, this still isn't right. You need to confirm Lisa Braedon for the shoot on Monday, pick up ten...or fifteen skirts from Calvin Klein for the same shoot and make me a reservation for that place with the art where Bal and I had our anniversary dinner last month..." he frowns. "and find me that piece of paper I was holding yesterday."

Dean stands frozen, really trying to remember the first thing on that list.

"Now, David." Castiel raises his eyebrows.

"Dean." He blurts.

He raises them further.

"My name is...Dean." He clarifies awkwardly.

Castiel glares at him for a few moments more before looking back down at the computer screen, ignoring him completely.

Dean doesn't quite know what to do.

"That's all. David."

He returns to the outer office, proverbial tail between his legs, actual face burning with embarrassment.

"I'd like to say you get used to him...but you really don't." Gabriel picks up a black of post-its. "What did he want?"

Dean honestly doesn't know.

The third day, the fourth day, the fifth, six and seventh...they're all the same.

Castiel arrives in a whirlwind of self importance, throws his outerwear at Dean's head, calls him Dan or David or Daniel and delivers huge lists of tasks ranging from the difficult (Getting sold out show tickets for him and his partner, Balthazar) to the ludicrous (Finding the 'black belt' that he saw in the closet yesterday, the magazines closet being at least a mile long in either direction, and containing approximately seven thousand belts, half of which are black.)

Dean wants to kill him.

But he's kind of terrified of him as well.

Gabriel does a good job of picking up the slack, but he's not happy about it, and gets crabbier every time Dean asks him about something. In part this is due to the pumpkin smoothie or crabstick juice he happens to be drinking that particular day, making him so irritable that Dean inwardly vows to start smuggling sugar into the office and dosing him with it.

All things considered it's kind of amazing he makes it to his second week before he makes his first cataclysmic mistake.

The rule is – deliver the proofs, the 'book', to Castiel's town house, and leave it downstairs without speaking to anyone.

But Dean can't work out where to leave it, and he hears voices so...

Big. Mistake.

He goes upstairs and catches Castiel having an argument with the so far unseen Balthazar. Tall, blond and looking just the tiniest bit like Sting.

"I don't understand why you think it has to be this way." Castiel thunders, and it's the first time Dean has seen him lose an iota of control, but he's definitely upset about something.

"Prove it doesn't then Cassie. It's not like you check in enough to know how..." Balthazar catches sight of Dean and stops talking to stare at him.

Castiel turns round to follow his gaze.

Dean didn't think his blood could actually turn to ice...and if it could, that he could remain alive while it happened.

He drops the proofs at the top of the stairs and backtracks as fast as he can without falling down.

He is so getting shit canned.

The next day Castiel summons him into his office and gives him a death glare which makes all previous eye contact seem warm and fuzzy.

"Sir, I..."

"I'd like you to find for me the new footage from season nineteen of..." he frowns down at the note pad in front of him. "_Supernatural,_ we're doing an up and coming spot on the new actresses."

"That 'chicks do demon hunting' thing? That's not been released yet." Dean splutters before he can stop himself.

Castiel fixes him with an excising glare.

"You have six hours...if you find yourself unable to do your job...well then feel free to go home and start checking the want ads."

Message received – succeed or be fired (out of a cannon into flames and failure).

"Understood." He manages, leaving the office to go sit at his desk and contemplate his options.

Quit and fail by default.

Try and Fail (and get fired).

Try and succeed (very unlikely).

He sighs and picks up the phone. Never let it be said that he's walked away from a challenge.

Two hours later he wishes he was Dead.

No one from the show will talk to him, from the actresses to the PA's to the caterers. He can't dig up a contact anywhere else and even the sneaky paparazzi seem to have crawled beneath their rocks.

"Whatcha working on?" Gabriel throws himself into his desk chair and downs the last of his diet Pepsi with a wince. He glares down at the can. "It's just not the same." He whines, tossing it into the waste paper basket.

"Unreleased footage of _Supernatural." _

"That thing with the hot babes and the demons...the angel with the huge." He gestures at his chest.

Dean raises his eyebrows.

"What? I'm gay not dead." Gabriel pops another can of diet soda and swigs bitterly. "You're never gonna get it like that though, you need to go through the fans – those crazy bastards can get anything." He hesitates. "You know...I'm on a few forums myself...just for the cheap thrills you know?"

"You could find me the footage?"

"I can find you a link to someone who might be able to help." Gabriel scrolls through a few pages. "Samlicker31_femslash4ev" he rolls his eyes. "Like that incest thing is ever getting off the ground with Areolas Of The Lord in the room."

Dean chokes on a mouthful of soda.

"Serves you right, you sugar intake...whore." Gabriel prints the details and slaps them down on the desk. "Thank me with eligible friends...that's all I ask."

Dean contacts 'Samlicker31' and after a horrific discussion manages to wrangle a clip that had previously gone unaired.

He mails it to Castiel's personal address and waits.

By the end of the day he's still heard nothing.

He makes it till the next morning before he snaps, when Castiel arrives, tossing his coat and bag onto his desk as usual, Dean follows him into the office.

"I sent you the footage." He says from the door.

"So I see." Castiel says, sipping his coffee and tapping at his keyboard. He leaves the silence for longer than Dean can bear. "Thank you Dean...that's all."

He's outside and sitting at his desk again before he realises that Castiel called him by his real name.

Anna starts to notice that he's not there when she wakes up, and that he comes home late. He has to ditch out of her birthday dinner to support Gabriel (newly infected with a cold that strips him of both good will and motor functions) at a gala that Castiel's attending. He hates that he's letting his life languish in favour of serving a man he doesn't even like, and who shows no sign of acknowledging or appreciating it. But on the other hand he's getting a little sick of Anna demanding his presence for her own events and work occasions without once supporting his own job.

So he stands behind Castiel in his new (slightly more expensive) dark suit, whispering the names and occupations of the guests as they approach, all believing that Castiel knows and cares who they are.

After the gala, Dean's set to run home to Anna, but Castiel turns to him as their car is pulling around.

"Gabriel you may go now."

Gabriel doesn't argue, just frowns slightly and then backs off, heading for a cab rank.

Dean gets into the car when the door is opened, Castiel ducks neatly into the vehicle from the other side, one hand on the front of his suit coat to straighten it. Once inside Dean begins to feel nervous, the partition in front cuts them off from the driver and leaves him in stony silence with the demon masquerading as his boss.

"The Paris trip is a very important event." Castiel doesn't even bother looking at him. "I need my best team with me...and that no longer includes Gabriel, not now that you're proving yourself a faster learner and far more dedicated."

"But Gabriel...he's been practically killing himself over that trip."

"Practically isn't enough." Castiel says, finally turning the weight of his stare on him. "His focus isn't complete and I will need more than my assistants full attention, it's a very important event."

"You can't seriously expect me to drop everything and go to Paris, he's my friend for God's..."

"You'll do it because you want to keep your job." Castiel's voice is soft and considering. "I think you'd do just about anything to keep this job...wouldn't you?"

Dean honestly doesn't think Castiel meant that to sound like it did, but all the same images are flashing through his mind. And right now? If the man sitting next to him casually asked him to open his pants and touch himself, hell even get down on his knees and get to work...he would.

He has no idea at what point he became so ruled by him...but he has. And it's fucking terrifying.

Castiel doesn't ask him to do either of those things, and the rest of the drive ends in silence.

The next day Castiel makes him break the news to Gabriel himself.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me with this bullshit!" Gabriel yells. Dean winces, kind of regretting his decision to take Gabriel to a cafe, rather than do this at the office.

"I'm sorry, I didn't..."

"If you say 'have a choice' I will end you with this salad fork." Gabriel growls, stabbing lettuce demonstratively. "Do you have any idea what I've been through in the last few weeks? I can't remember what carbs taste like." He pauses, then quick as some kind of ninja, grabs Dean's donut and bites down with a low moan. "Sweet lord of mercy...this does not mean you are off the hook." He gestures angrily.

"Understood." Dean bows his head and tries not to think about the fact that he's going to be spending all day, every day with Castiel for a whole weekend.


	2. Chapter 2

They're over an hour into the plane journey when Castiel finally notices that Dean has a white knuckle grip on the armrest and that even sitting one row in front of his assistant, he can hear his muffled moan when they hit a small amount of turbulence.

He glances over his shoulder repeatedly but says nothing of it.

Their arrival in Paris is a flurry of luggage collection and cab rides and a hotel check in that seems to take forever. Finally Dean accompanies Castiel's bags up to his suite and opens the door for the porter, tipping him and then taking in the extravagance of the room.

Castiel arrives only a few minutes later, discarding his coat and carry on bag with about as much care as he usually shows. He sits on one of the elegant cream sofas and removes his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand.

"Show me my itinerary."

Dean produces the folder and lays it out on the table in front of him, taking out his own notebook in case Castiel should have anything to say about the set up of his day. The other man flicks through the file with disinterest, pausing when he notes something.

"You can seat James Uriel at my table."

"But...your table is full." Dean flinches under the sharp stare suddenly boring into his eyes.

"Balthazar won't be joining me." He says flatly.

"Does this mean I don't have to pick him up from the airport tomorrow?" Dean scrabbles with his notes.

"He's making his own way to Paris...he has business here." Castiel intones. "Find me a drink, Glenfiddich." He closes the folio and gets up, wandering into the bedroom as the phone starts to ring.

Dean leaves to find him some scotch. It takes longer than he thought it would because he can't for the life of him remember where the bar is, and he starts to panic that Castiel is waiting for him and he's taking too long. Eventually he finds the right corridor and makes his way to the bar, choosing to charge the bottle of scotch to the room rather than going back with only a glass. Bottle and glass on a tray he makes his way back to the Royal Suite, losing his was once in the process. He's actually sweating by the time he finds the right door, praying that Castiel isn't going to tear him off a strip, silently and coolly as usual, for taking so long.

When he opens the door the main area of the suite is still empty, so he figures Castiel must still be taking a call in the bedroom. He sets the bottle and glass down on their tray. It's only when he turns to gather up his things and leave that he see's Castiel, sitting in the chair he'd previously vacated, shoes removed and feet up on the plush seat, knees drawn up. His eyes are red rimmed, and without the definition of his black glasses his face looks incredibly pale and tired. His blackberry is on the floor beside the chair.

"Thank you Dean." He says, and despite his usual glacial disinterest he's never heard Castiel sound quite so detached before. The blackberry buzzes with an incoming call and Castiel sucks in a harsh shaky breath, looking down at it like he doesn't know whether to answer it or snap the fragile plastic into pieces.

Dean picks up the phone and declines the call.

He has no idea why he does it, and the sudden pressure of Castiel's eyes on him makes him aware that he's just committed some kind of assistant cardinal sin. He's supposed to assist, not interfere, interact, but not notice things.

Castiel leans back with a sudden sigh, closing his eyes.

Dean pours him a drink and presses it into Castiel's limp fingers, watching them grasp the glass with white knuckled intensity.

"Thank you." And for the first time it's not a dismissal, punctuation at the end of a command. It's an actual 'thank you'.

"You're welcome." Is the only thing he can think to say.

Back in New York, Gabriel is not having a good week.

Bad enough that he's been passed over for the Paris trip, bad enough that drinking seaweed and eating only raw vegetables until he thought he was going to turn green had turned out to be pointless...now he had to work even while Castiel was gone, and with Dean's stand in no less. A clueless temp.

And now this, and didn't that just take the sugarless-rye-seed-crusted-soy-non-biscuit.

Gabriel walks into the room and instantly smells vanilla.

It's torturously sweet and faint, and his mouth actually starts to water. Dean's replacement is standing awkwardly by his desk, hands clenching with nerves.

"Why do I smell vanilla?" Gabriel asks, accusatory without knowing why.

"Uh..." the guy turns round and frowns, or at least Gabriel judges it to be a frown from his place several feet below the other man's line of sight. What was with hiring giants all of a sudden? "Lip balm?" he produces a small tube of the stuff and Gabriel takes it stiffly and uncaps it to smell the contents. Bingo.

"Huh." His brain officially shuts down in that first wave of sweet scent.

He reaches up to grab the other man's neck, pulling him down and kissing him. It's open mouthed and messy and he's probably gone mad from candy deprivation, but it's so _good_, and he can taste the vanilla all the way around his mouth.

He finally pulls away, leaving a slightly startled and mostly speechless man standing, red lipped, in front of him.

Gabriel straightens his shirt and runs a hand through his hair.

"So, yeah...that was a thing...that...happened." he struggles to regain control of himself, failing and surrendering as he uncaps the lip balm and runs it around the man's mouth again, taking comfort in the fact that he's not making any attempt to stop him. His breath hitches and he seals their mouths together again, warm, wet skin tasting deliriously sweet and so smooth against his own mouth.

They break apart again and he slides more of the balm, slowly softening in the hot palm of his hand, over the guy's mouth.

"I'm...Sam, by the way." The other man manages to gasp around Gabriel's fingers.

"Gabriel." He rubs vanilla over his own lips before dragging the taller man closer again. "Please tell me you have more of this stuff?" He kisses him before he can respond, pulling away for air a few minutes later.

"Chocolate or cinnamon?" he pants, Gabriel just moans and kisses him again.


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel makes his way through the bottle of scotch and buzzes Dean's blackberry for another bottle. It's after midnight but Dean knows better than to turn in. He makes his way to the bar, red eyed and tired, not looking forward to seeing Castiel again. Dubious a grip as he'd had on his emotional control before, the guy had to be hammered by now, or at least drunk enough to let something regrettable slip. Dean really didn't want to find out if Castiel had a vulnerable side – especially not if seeing it meant that he got fired when Castiel was compos mentis again.

He hears a few threads of conversation as he waits for the bottle, idle gossip and people exclaiming over new collections. It's getting so he's prepared to kill himself if he has to listen to another exchange about shoes or bags or what Chanel is doing for their fall line.

Whatever happened to sports and news and the merits of draft over micros brews?

He tunes most of it out but after a while he hears Castiel's name.

Dean actually thinks he feels his heart stop.

The two women ahead of him at the bar keep talking regardless, but Dean's listening intently now, order of a second bottle of scotch momentarily forgotten.

"I think he'll do a fabulous job, Castiel's been losing his touch for a while now. A fresh take is just what Runway needs." She flicker her long red hair. "Besides, I hear that Bal isn't so concerned about upsetting the old man anymore."

"No! When did that happen?" Her blond friend swirls the last of her cocktail, eyes wide and attentive.

"Rumour has it, Balthazar's been stepping out on Castiel for a while now, idiot was too busy with his failing magazine to notice...and now Bal gets the lot, editor in chief position and he's shot of the ice queen to boot."

Dean takes the bottle from the barman and backtracks to Castiel's suite.

Balthazar, Castiel's partner, is taking his job and breaking up with him? So the whole point of the Paris trip is to ease in the new era and throw Castiel back out onto the sidelines without him making any fuss.

He can believe it, if there's one thing Castiel would find intolerable ungracious it would be making a scene.

So he's going to eat blinis and drink champagne with the people selling him down the river. Dean has to hand it to the crazy bastard, he's got balls.

He opens the door to the suite, finding space on the coffee table for the new bottle. Castiel is sitting on the couch, suit jacket discarded along with his tie, white shirt open at the collar. His eyes are only a little blurry and when Dean fails to meet them he's obviously sharp enough to work out what that means.

"You've heard." He opens the new bottle nonchalantly. "Don't worry, I'll be sure to recommend you."

"They're firing you?" Dean hates that he's brought this up but he can't quite believe it.

"Unofficially." Castiel pours himself a generous glass. "The line is that I'm moving onto better things, though that isn't the case...and Balthazar..." he falters with a pained frown. "Balthazar's a self interested prick." He says seriously. "He always has been."

Dean snorts a laugh before he can suppress it. "Sorry."

"Oh no, it's actually quite amusing." Castiel holds the glass limply, his voice lazy with drink and heavy with self deprecation. "I sunk my life into this magazine...I lost my first husband to it because I was so determined to make it perfect, and now they're going to hand the keys to my kingdom over to a..." he waves his hand carelessly, "a...a pretty boy with no business sense, perfect hair and an ego that could kill us all." He laughs to himself, downing the glass in one move. "At least I get to keep my pension."

"You're not that old."

Castiel's eyes blaze at him and Dean finds that even in his weakened, drunk state, his boss is still terrifying.

"I'm old enough, ancient by Runway standards. But then I suppose Balth isn't far behind...he'll get there, slag heap's full of people like us." He puts the glass down and gazes at it thoughtfully. "Why are you still here?" he asks, his voice small and quiet.

"You didn't tell me to leave." Dean points out.

"Well I'm not overly concerned with your movements right now, do whatever you want."

Dean slowly lowers himself into the armchair. Castiel glares at him for a moment longer.

"Get a glass. I hate drinking alone." Castiel cocks his head. "If you'd like to join me that is."

Dean goes retrieves a tumbler from a tray on the table.

Sitting with his sloppily resplendent employer drinking top shelf scotch in a luxury suite, Dean was relieved when the whole thing took on a dreamlike quality which made it much easier to believe. Castiel downed two more measures of alcohol and Dean sipped his own, acknowledging that it was better than what he was used to.

"You can finish that and go." Castiel says finally. Standing up and making his way to his bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes.

"What was he like?" Dean surprises himself by asking. Castiel turns to face him, shirt half undone and frown carved into his face.

"Balthazar?..." Castiel seems to turn this over in his mind. "He could never remember important events, he understood my job and he was mildly exciting in bed..." his face takes on an open look that makes him appear suddenly much younger, like he's made of skin instead of stone. "I used to love him...rather a lot."

Dean gulps the rest of his scotch.

"You want some company?" He gestures at the bedroom door behind Castiel. He has no idea why, he's not drunk enough to do this, certainly not in love with the guy...but Castiel is vulnerable, and he's not walking away from a chance to see under his exoskeleton of icy detachment.

Castiel swallows, then draws himself up, looking tall and important, and just a hair off being the same man Dean sees in the office every day.

"When you're ready." Castiel says pointedly and stands aside as Dean passes him, stripping off his suit jacket and sitting on the bed.

Castiel is an interesting man to sleep with. Dean had expected him to be domineering, definitely a top and probably with some sort of control fetish, a need to choke or overpower his partner. Instead the man surprises Dean by letting himself fall into the bottom role, baring himself without much thought and opening his legs to Dean once he' stripped his clothes off.

Dean figures him then for the type to have so much control in their outer lives that they need to be controlled in bed. He goes through the process of lube and stretching, sheathing himself with a condom that Castiel flicks at him before pressing into the waiting body underneath him.

Castiel is, for all that he claims to be past it, still handsome enough, pale and taut and smooth. Dean hits his stride after a few thrusts and, with the older man heaving up against him, finds himself ready to come within under fifteen minutes. The alcohol and the pressure of Castiel around him making him feel hot and dizzy.

That's when Castiel turns the tables on him.

Dean feels the first twitch of impending orgasm, and begins to relax just as Castiel's hands seize his hips.

"Not yet." His voice is rougher than it's ever been, fucked out and gasping.

"The...hell?" is all Dean can get out, fighting his oncoming orgasm reluctantly as it begins to pool in his stomach.

"If you come...you're fired." Castiel shifts, forcing him deeper with a tight groan. "Harder."

"You're kidding me right?" Dean scrunches his eyes up tight and tries to move faster and harder without losing it entirely. Castiel moans softly.

"Not...kidding." He grunts. "No reference either...uh, there!" His body pitches up and clenches fiercely. Dean grits his teeth and brings his hand down to Castiel's cock, only to have it batted forcefully away. He opens his eyes.

"Oh come on!" he whines. "You're gonna make me...?"

Castiel smiles with a wolfish display of white teeth, eyes pressed tightly closed.

"Just like this." He groans, a slight frown on his face. "But...harder."

Dean really hopes he isn't going to have a heart attack.

Under that hope is another, that if Gabriel had come to Paris in his place, the other man wouldn't have ended up like this.

Dimly he wants this all for himself – to be because he is who he is, and not just because Castiel wanted something to take the edge off and Dean happened to offer.

Castiel makes a small sound at the back of his throat, stretching out luxuriously and clenching sharply as he comes across his own stomach. Dean keeps moving, holding back and shaking with the effort.

"Can I...Cas-tiel, can I..." His hips lurch and stutter, Castiel makes a small contented noise as he revels in the laxness of post-orgasm, his hand cups Dean's face, thumb pressing slightly into his throat, just enough to make Dean's heart lurch.

"Come."

And he really hates himself for it, but he does, hard.

Castiel watches him shudder through it, not moving when Dean finally goes limp and collapses over him.

"You always that hands on?" Dean pants into the blazing flush on Castiel's neck.

"How else would you know how to do it right?" Castiel says, without a hint of playfulness or irony. Dean grins despite himself.

Dean's phone buzzes, somewhere in his discarded pants. He groans.

"Well don't look at me, I'm right here." Castiel points out.

Dean scrambles off the bed and grabs the phone, watching Castiel fall back onto his expensive sheets and comb a hand through the come pooled on his stomach. Dean swallows sharply and hits the 'answer' button.

"Dean!" Sam sounds harassed and breathless. "Quick question."

"Seriously? You're covering me for a week Sammy, how hard can it be?"

He hears muffled talking in the background, Sam's hand must be covering the speaker.

"Yeah...mmmhmm...listen, Dean? You know that box of stuff I got you for Christmas last year?"

"The joke thing from..."

"Yeah, where is it? 'cos...I kinda need it." Sam sounds really shifty and Dean can't blame him, who calls someone internationally to enquire about sex novelties?

"Really?"

"Yup, 'specially the lube? That pina colada..."

"Ugh! Top shelf, closet in bedroom, never tell me."

"Thanks bro!" Dean hears a scuffle like Sam's tried to hang up and missed the button, a suspicion that's confirmed when Sam yells "Gabe, we're good!"

Dean rings off – some things he really, really doesn't want to know about.


	4. Chapter 4

The problem with sleeping with your boss is dealing with the aftermath, and slightly more personally in this case, dealing with crippling fear of said boss's wrath and repressing the details of your brother's sex life.

Dean snaps his phone shut and turns back to Castiel who's still lying across the bed, naked and with his eyes half closed.

"So should I...?" He gestures towards the door, keeping one hand on the sheet around his waist.

Castiel turns his face into the cream silk of the pillow closest to him.

"I think that was all I needed you for." He mutters.

Dean grabs his clothes and retreats to the other room, dressing and letting himself out quietly.

In his own room he turns his phone off, but leaves his blackberry on. He doesn't think about why that is, because when you sleep with your boss and he gives you the brush off afterwards? You probably shouldn't be worried that he'll want ice water at three in the morning and won't be able to reach you.

But that's exactly what he does.

The next morning he gets ready as usual, putting Castiel's appointment book, itinerary and contact list into his satchel out of habit (and if there's one thing worse than sleeping with your boss and then having him ignore you it's the fact that he has to wear a freaking satchel).

Castiel is putting on his cufflinks when Dean enters the suite, his blue tie hanging loose around his neck, top shirt buttons undone.

"Good morning." Dean sets down the coffee he brought up, also as per their usual routine.

Castiel doesn't acknowledge him – so far true to form.

"Our table for the brunch announcements is already set up, so you can decide when you want to go down." Dean hesitates. "I took the liberty of having a car ready from nine onwards – just in case you don't want to stay for the whole thing."

Castiel shoots him one of his icy looks.

"I'm sure I can decide my travel arrangements for myself." He plucks at the end of his tie. "Do this for me would you?"

Dean steps up and takes hold of the tie tugging it to the side slightly so he can button the shirt up over the pale skin beneath it, which feels warm beneath the thin cotton. Castiel remains unmoved while Dean buttons him up and starts on the tie, wondering why Castiel needs him to do this now when he never has before.

When he's done Castiel just steps away and picks up his bag, throwing his trench coat over his arm and stalking out the door, leaving Dean to run after him. At the entry way to the hotel their hired town car takes them to the big brunch at a fancy restaurant the name of which Dean can't even pronounce.

At their table he tries to focus on the lily centre piece and not on the fact that within half an hour Castiel is going to get officially replaced by Balthazar.

Castiel is annoyingly and yet admirably poised about the whole thing, sipping his champagne and slowly, delicately, eating his smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. His suit and hair are immaculate as usual and Dean can tell that everyone else at the table is kind of disappointed that he looks so composed.

He's a little bit proud about that.

Still, when Balthazar takes to the mike on stage, Dean kind of wants to ruin the whole effect of Castiel's ice king demeanour by slinging a bagel and a crystal vat of caviar at the smug prick.

He doesn't and figures that now he can at least put 'extremely heightened sense self control' on his resume when he inevitably gets shit canned by said smug prick.

"Hello everyone, and may I say what an amazing occasion it is that brings together such a smorgasbord of talent." Balthazar oozes into the mike, and Dean feels a stab of combined jealousy and disbelief that this guy had Castiel to himself for years. "Now, it is my great honour to share with you some truly exciting and, not entirely unexpected news I'm sure."

Dean really wishes he'd gotten a company firearm instead of a blackberry.

"This year, that sentinel of poise and fashion known across continents as 'Runway' magazine...is changing hands." There's a slight stir in the crowd. "and I'm truly honoured by the decision made to place me at the helm, as editor in chief." Balthazar raises his glass. "A toast to my esteemed predecessor, who we all wish the best in his next life and whatever career opportunities he may find."

Everyone toasts Castiel and Dean thinks it might be the most mean spirited thing he's witnessed in his entire life.

Castiel just nods his head in acknowledgement, then stands up and approaches the stage. He is after all one of the speakers at the event, has been every year as one of the most important people in the industry, and now he has to follow Balthazar's announcement and keep his polite face on for the sake of the public.

Dean clenches his fists under the table, ok so the guy used him and them blew him off, he still doesn't think he deserves this.

Balthazar stands slightly to the side, raising his hand to pat Castiel's shoulder as he takes the stand in front of the mike. To his credit Castiel doesn't shove the sleazy bastard off, but his mouth moves slightly, so quickly that Dean's sure he's the only one that catches it, and Balthazar removes the hand of his own accord, paling at the unheard threat.

"It does seem that this is a moment for some reflection on my past exploits at Runway...but as I'm sure you are all familiar with the publication I'll spare you a rehashing of my contributions." He rests his hands lightly on the lectern behind the microphone. "Instead I'd like to say that, as I'm sure many of you know, Runway has grown a little stale, a little difficult and I have spent a lot of time trying to keep such a...sentinel...from collapsing beneath its own weight. I've been due a respite from that struggle for some time, and I can think of no one better matched to the magazine in its current state, than Balthazar. I'm sure you'll work miracles." He says, half turning towards the other man, who looks more than slightly ashen and pissed off.

As he may well be, because Dean speaks fluent Castielese, and he's pretty sure that the guy just called Runway (and Balthazar by extension) a piece of shit that he can't wait to be shot of, and that Balthazar is going to go down so fast it'll make the titanic's trajectory look stable.

"Though I'm sure that you are all by now tired of hearing speeches, and are longing to get back to your entree's and gift bags, I have one further announcement." He waits for a second and Dean can tell that everyone is riveted. And that's the power of Castiel, that he can call everyone in the room a gossip mongering, shallow, dick and not only not have to actually _say the words _but also manage to command their respect and attention as he does it.

So, maybe he is a little in love with him, just for that.

"And that is that in my newly acquired editorial freedom, I had chosen to continue in the manner to which I have become accustomed – however, as it is I feel that I cannot rally myself as I once did, to the standard of another. Therefore, my own publication, 'Mode' will be an expression of my continued desire for perfection, in an industry that seems to thrive on the flawed." He steps back from the microphone as the press members covering the event start to bark their own questions, fluttering in excitement. Balthazar glares daggers at him as Castiel calmly dismounts the stage and walks back through the hall, past the table he was sitting at, leaving Dean to gather his things and dash after him to the exit, where the car is waiting.

Once seated in the back of the gleaming black sedan, Dean can't help but stare at Castiel, who's just snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in front of every important figure of the industry, his ex-boyfriend, and a herd of press representatives to boot.

"To the hotel." Castiel murmurs into the com between the rear of the car and the driver.

"You ignored me this morning." Dean's mouth says, before his brain can tell him to shut the fuck up.

Castiel looks at him and his attention is so fierce that Dean wonders how he's going to survive this, and marvels at how good Castiel is at this, so good in fact that he manages to act like a totally disinterested asshole and yet still have Dean craving his attention and feeling warm and worthy in his gaze.

The guy has to be some kind of genius.

"I didn't realise you needed constant reinforcement." Castiel murmurs coolly.

"I didn't realise that whole 'depressed drunk' thing was an act." Dean growls.

"It wasn't." Castiel replies smartly. "I didn't have the idea until last night."

Dean wonders why this surprises him, it really shouldn't.

"If you feel like joining me again this evening, you have the key." Castiel sighs as the car pulls up at the hotel, he gets out when the driver opens the door, then pauses and turns back as an afterthought. "I'd very much like to see you."

He whisks away before Dean can gather his scattered thoughts.

The problem with sleeping with your boss, is realising that you're going to do it again, despite the fact that you know it's a mistake.

He goes to see Castiel that night and the man manages to cover his surprise that Dean actually showed up quite well. But there are the butts of cigarettes in the ashtray on the windowsill, and Dean knows that Castiel only smokes when he's nervous.

It turns out that Castiel is no less bossy the second time around, even face down and bent over the bed sideways he still manages to growl orders and make Dean feel both inadequate and amazing in equal measures. Dean figures he can put up with someone forbidding him to come, as long as it feels this good when he's finally allowed to.

It takes him a while, but eventually he begins to understand that Castiel's insistence that Dean does his tie for him in the mornings is a sign of affection. It's accompanied by others, the way Castiel casually chases the raw onions from his salad plate onto Dean's before taking the extra ice from his water whenever they attend restaurant dinners. Because he knows Dean likes onions and hates biting down on ice. He stops getting Dean his own room and after a day of ignoring him and barking orders at the air around him he crawls into bed with him and licks his way up Dean's spine, nipping the ridges.

Dean's still waiting for topping to not feel like submitting, but he gets the feeling it never will.

He's also vaguely scared as to what Castiel will actually be like as a top.

But he kind of wants to find out all the same.

The trip ends and Dean flies home with the man who was once his hated and feared boss, and who is now his hated and feared boss by day and his feared and admired lover by night. He puts Castiel's luggage into a cab and watches it and the man himself drive away, wondering what the hell is going to happen to them now they're home.

He takes his own cab home, feeling a little lonely now that Castiel is no longer with him after a week of practically (and literally) living on top of each other.

When Dean arrives home he throws his suitcase to one side and shoves the door to his room open to toss his carryon bag onto the bed.

"Sam, you home?" he calls wearily, when he hears no reply he opens the door to his brothers room, time to snag a Lost box set and recuperate from the confusing nightmare trip from hell.

Only the room isn't empty.

Gabriel is lying on the bed in only a pair of red silk boxers, arms tied to the headboard with thick red strands, which Dean recognises after a second as liquorish whips.

"Oh for the love of..." he covers his eyes and backs away.

"No! Dean, can you..." Gabriel wriggles, "Can you scratch my stomach? Sam went to take a shower and...well, I'm itchy."

Dean slowly approaches the bed, thankful that at least Gabriel's more offensive parts are covered. He scratches him hesitantly and Gabriel sighs with relief.

"Thanks."

"Why are you sticky?" he shudders, instantly regretting the question.

"Do you really want to know?" Gabriel raises an eyebrow.

"No...just, God no." Dean backs away again and closes the door behind him, but not quickly enough to cut off Gabriel's muttered,

"On a separate note, you are out of maple syrup."

True enough Dean spots the empty bottle on the kitchen table, plus two empty siphons of whipped cream and a couple of thick smears of chocolate and a handprint which leaves little to the imagination when it comes to what transpired on his breakfast table.

His one source of solace is that he won't have to deal with sugarless-bitch-Gabriel anymore, or Sexless-funless-Sam.

Something he later recants on finding the M&M's all over the living room floor and the three empty jars of marshmallow fluff in the bathroom.


	5. Chapter 5

"You slept with your boss?" Sam exclaims, half a bagel in one hand and a knife loaded with cream cheese in the other. "What about Anna? She was already pissed you've been spending so much time at work, now you're fucking your boss?"

Gabriel drenches his pancakes in chocolate syrup. "Sam, not important." He thumps the bottle down. "What was he like? Was he weird? Kinky? Premature? Hairy? Hot? C'mon, spill."

Both Sam and Dean glare at him over the (sullied) breakfast table.

"Anna broke it off with me when I suddenly had to go to freaking Paris for a fortnight." Dean continues, ignoring Gabriel entirely. "So, yeah, not that bent out of shape about it."

Gabriel snickers.

"But yeah, the whole part about Castiel being my boss...and kind of psychotic? I'm freaking out about that." Dean spears some bacon and looks at it idly. "I mean, he can get anyone right? So why me?"

"Get yes, Keep? Not so much." Gabriel points out, mouth full of pancakes. "His husband left him a while back for being...well, a work obsessed, emotionally unavailable sociopath, I know because I took the phone message. Not my finest hour. Then a few years later Balthazar screws him over and steals his job? Guy has issues up the clenched wazoo."

Dean contemplates this.

"I guess it just happens as long as we both want it to then." He mutters, scraping together a forkful of eggs. "It's not like he's gonna want anything serious."

"Ok...so now tell us the good stuff." Gabriel demands. "Top or bottom?" he thinks for a moment "Spit or swallow?"

"Not answering that." Dean grumbles getting up to take his dishes to the sink. "I'm going out – please don't ruin my apartment more than you already have."

"We won't" Sam promises, at the same time Gabriel announces "Sam swallows." Just to show he's will to give up a few details himself.

Dean leaves them in arctic, disapproving silence.

With Balthazar taking over the office in a matter of weeks, there is very little for Dean to do. All the employees are being re-interviewed by Balthazar's people and Castiel is no longer coming into the office because his last issue already went out and he's been officially relieved of his editor in chief title.

Basically Dean has three weeks of paid vacation time because his contract doesn't end until just after Balthazar takes to the helm of the magazine.

On his second day of paid nothingness he gets text, not on his own phone but on his now defunct work blackberry.

It reads simply – _The town house – 8_

Castiel wants to see him again.

He'd half expected their brief series of trysts to end once they were back on American soil, but clearly Castiel has other plans, and those seem to involve inviting Dean to his home that night.

It doesn't occur to him to refuse.

He takes a cab to the town house, which is as imposing as he remembers it being the last time he was there. He still has his key but he doesn't know if he should knock or not so he does, and receives no response. Just as he's about to use his key, the door opens and Castiel steps aside to let him in.

He barely has time to take in the fact that his normally immaculate boss is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, his bare feet pale on the plush carpeting, before Castiel pushes him up against the now closed front door, knee pressing between his legs.

So yeah, safe to say it was still on, re-location notwithstanding.

Afterwards, lying across Castiel's probably quite expensive and now irreparably marked couch, he sits up and looks down at the man splayed on the cushions.

"So...what are we doing here?"

And judging from the way Castiel blinks up at him, yes that is the stupidest thing he could have said.

"We just had sex, and now you're asking me to 'define the relationship'." Castiel reports coolly. "Which is - that we've had sex, both in Paris and here...and that you're still my PA if you show up at Mode on Monday."

Castiel gets up and waders out of the room, naked, returning with a bottle of scotch and two glasses. Dean watches his pour two measures out and then slide one over to him.

"How are you so...never mind, you're like this about everything."

Castiel blinks at him.

"What am I like?" he asks, as if the answer will probably bore him. Dean swallows his discomfort (and yes a certain amount of fear) in order to reply.

"Kind of cold, scary, controlling..." and supposed lack of fear be damned because he's a little scared the Castiel's just going to bite his head off and lay eggs in his torso or something.

"I've always been this way." Castiel grits out. "I'm professional."

"We're not at work right now." Dean points out. "So if you wanted to...be a human being...maybe now's the time you could do that."

Castiel frowns at him, then puts his glass down and lies back on the couch, one arm beckoning to him. Dean lies down as well, feeling Castiel's arm going round him as they lie face to face.

"This is...better?" Castiel murmurs.

"Much." Dean admits, hand tracing circles on Castiel's hip. "But I still don't know what we're doing...why you..."

"When it becomes apparent." Castiel sighs.

Dean's a little confused by that, until he realises that essentially Castiel means 'when I work it out'.

Which is a little reassuring.


	6. Chapter 6

_6,000 words of original fiction done – have an update guys, we made it!_

Dean officially has no idea what the fuck is going on.

He now works at Mode, which is just as confusing, demoralising and full of skinny bitches as the last office. Castiel also works in much the same way, still throws his coat on Dean's desk in the mornings, still mutter's orders with the same kind of cold expectation of failure and uncaring attitude towards success. Dean's not really sure whether to love him or hate him by the end of a work day, when Castiel takes a car to the town house and Dean goes back to his apartment to listen to Sam talk about how he thinks Gabriel only loves him as a form of exercise, and alternatively unpack the boxes of his stuff that Anna finally got round to having moved to Sam's place.

Then, usually at around eight, a car turns up, drives Dean to Castiel's house and leave him there. Castiel opens the door in his 'I'm a human being, I swear' outfit, jeans and a T-shirt to most normal people, and invites him in. They watch movies, they eat, they fuck and Dean forgets for a couple of hours that Castiel never got the full blue fairy blessing when it came to being a real boy, with feelings and emotional sensibilities.

Dean spots an article online about a month into this new arrangement, something about how 'Runway' is tanking under Balthazar's control, but tanking in the fashion business, so basically he just picked the wrong colour skirt for the season or something.

You'd think he'd shot the pope and put a picture on the cover for all the fuss people were making.

Still, Dean prints it out, buys and apple pie from his favourite bakery and takes both items with him when the car comes to take him to Castiel's as usual. He has no idea why he does it, but he does.

Castiel eyes the box with suspicion.

"What is that?"

"It's pie." Dean says, setting it on the table between them, beside the remains of his burger and Castiel's garden salad. They've never eaten the same food before, Castiel's always weirdly strict. "To celebrate." Dean says, sliding the article across to him.

"That's childish." Castiel says, but his eyes gleam with triumph like they do over the sales reports for Mode, needless to say it's thriving, and Dean takes this as proof that his boyfriend clearly knows how to pick a skirt.

Castiel looks dubiously at the pie.

"I haven't eaten carbs in eight years." He mutters. "and it was an accident then."

"Maybe that's why you're such a bitch at work." Dean points out. "You just need some flaky goodness." He's gotten a little more comfortable with Castiel, just enough to call him on some the shit he does at the office.

Castiel takes a forkful of pie and puts it in his mouth like it's a lump of cardboard sandwiched with wax.

"Good?" Dean asks, eyebrows raised as Castiel chews.

The older man snags the box and pulls it towards him.

"What are you having?" he mumbles around another mouthful of pie.

Dean watches Castiel demolish the pie with almost psychopathic fixation, each piece of crust and each daub of apple filling being treated to the same slow pressure of his fork, the same motion of his lips around it, the same intrigued and pleasure filled expression on his face.

Afterwards, Castiel licks his lips, drops the fork and catches Dean's eye.

"What?" he asks, with just an edge of annoyance.

"Nothing...I've just never seen someone...not me...eat an entire pie that fast." He pulls a face. "I was worried for you there."

Castiel frowns in irritation, not liking the joke at his expense.

Dean stops snickering to himself and freezes under his bosses glare.

"Upstairs." Castiel says, without moving, voice carefully pitched as calm and authoritative. "Wait for me."

Dean's stomach flips but he does as he's told.

He realises somewhere in the mix of pie and mocking, he'd thought the word boyfriend.

He blinks at his reflection in a mirror as he goes upstairs to Castiel's bedroom.

He's so screwed.

It's another hour before Castiel joins him in the bedroom, and Dean's gone from mildly curious to on edge and turned on and apprehensive.

Castiel just does that to him.

As it turns out, he was right to fear what Castiel would be like as a top.

Frankly he doesn't want to even discuss it.

Because really, there's weird sex in a kinky, awesome way. Then there's weird in the Gabriel and Sam sense of not wanting to hear about it...and then there's this. The kind of sex that if anyone ever accused him of having it, Dean might just have to kill them just to keep it quiet.

To preserve his dignity he has kind of cropped the night down to Castiel entering the bedroom...and then an hour later when he'd finally been allowed to come, face up, spread eagled on the bed with his arms handcuffed behind his back, making him sort of turtle-like and helpless.

Not even the weirdest thing, Dean has a blush he swears, that won't fade for a month, much like the rug burn on his knees and the impression of panty elastic on his waist.

When Castiel collapses on the bed next to him, stretching lazily, chest still flushed and sweating. Dean notices that he's smiling. Castiel never really full on smiles at anything, but right now he's relaxed and stated and a kind of half-asleep smile quirks his reddened lips.

If he could get enough breath back he'd probably comment on that.

As it is it takes him about five minutes to work up the energy to ask Castiel to free him from the handcuffs, which he does, albeit grudgingly. Flopping back onto the bed when he's done and watching as Dean sits up, easing his sore arms before fumbling with the complex fastenings of the garter belt and suspenders still bunching on his legs.

"You're a freak, you know that?" He mutters, lying down and pressing his face tiredly into the curve of Castiel's neck.

It says a lot for his state that Castiel doesn't glare at him for that remark, but instead sighs nonchalantly and rubs a hand down Dean's back.

"Your fault, you brought me pie."

And Dean fully believe that it is his fault, that perhaps pie is some kind of dangerous brand of Ecstasy to creatures from whatever the hell planet Castiel comes from.

"I'm allowed to bring my boyfriend pie." He mumbles, edging into sleep and trying to fight the endorphins soaking his brain. It takes him a second to catch up to the _fucking stupid thing he just said. _

Castiel stays very still for a moment, fingers paused on Dean's skin.

Then he trails them up carefully and strokes the back of Dean's neck, the vulnerable flesh prickling at the touch.

"Yes you are." Castiel says softly. Dean is too afraid to look up from Castiel's collar bone, too scared to see what expression is on his face.

"Goodnight Dean." Castiel murmurs, relaxing against the pillows.

"Night Cas." Dean mutter's back, burying his face in Castiel's skin and trying to work out what the hell he just did.


	7. Chapter 7

_No updates for three weeks, sorry I'm going home for a while and the internet is not plentiful there _

The B word changes things.

The next Monday, Dean gets a package in a neat brown box, folded with hospital corners and tied over one way and then the other with neat gold streaked twine.

It contains a plain suspender belt and a pair of neat black stockings with lace tops.

He puts them on with a nervous heart, tugging on the silk and clasping them carefully to the belt. Under his pants they rub and caress, and he has to suppress a groan each time one of the straps snaps against his skin.

He's a kinky bastard and he never even knew it.

Castiel doesn't look at him differently at work, probably can't even see the stockings under his thick pants, so Dean doesn't really grasp the point of the exercise until the end of the day. Castiel comes to his desk and waits stiffly, until Dean looks up.

"Mr Novak?" he asks, because that's still what he calls him here, in the office.

Castiel doesn't really look at him or refer to him by name.

"Are you ready to go?" he asks, almost curtly.

Dean blinks.

Castiel looks down at him and his expression doesn't change as he says. "I'm finished for the day. I'm retiring to the town house for the night." He says stiffly.

"You...want me to come with you?" Dean asks slowly. Something goes dark and blank in Cas's eyes.

"If you don't wish to feel free to..."

"No!" Dean raises his hands quickly. "No...I...I want to come, with you." He says ineloquently.

Castiel looks at him for a long moment, then nods stiffly and continues to wait as Dean flips off his computer and gathers his things.

He leads Dean down to the car and they get in, riding in silence to the town house.

Once there, Castiel calmly calls for takeout, the Chinese place that Dean loves, though he's never told Castiel about it. Castiel loosens his tie, unbuttoning his shirt a little and getting Dean to follow him into the sitting room without actual direction.

"Lie down Dean." He says, and Dean does so, on the silk covered couch that he's sure Castiel hadn't picked out himself.

Castiel plucks Dean's feet into his lap, perched on the edge of the couch and slowly kneading the bridge of Dean's stocking clad foot and rolling the ball of it carefully, until Dean lays back against the arm of the couch and sighs, closing his eyes.

"I've been very pleased with you...at work." Castiel says softly. "Perhaps I don't make enough of it." He strokes the silk over Dean's soles and rubs them slowly. "You've made a great difference to me." Dean opens his eyes and sees Castiel's expression, a mixture of puzzlement and softness, marred with displeasure. Blue eyes meet his and a kind of desperation, a brokenness lies behind them.

"I so don't want to be in love with you." He says quietly.

"Castiel..."

Castiel's hands slide a little way up Dean's calves.

"I have loved before...by first husband..." Castiel shakes his head. "He was a disaster and I never wanted to feel that way again, to feel...grateful to a man for staying with me...and Balthazar..." he laughs bitterly. "Balthazar was never a love of mine...but I never thought he could threaten me, I never thought he'd damage me in leaving..." He rakes his fingers up the arch of Dean's foot. "but he did...he _surprised_ me, he used me and he took a lot from me." Castiel looks down at Dean's feet thoughtfully. "I'm so tired of people leaving me." He murmurs.

"You're in love with me?" Dean asks numbly. Castiel looks at him as if to say 'do stop being tiresome'.

"I don't do this just for anyone." Castiel says softly, deft fingers on Dean's silk covered toes; he lowers his mouth to the foot in his hands, brushing his lips gently against the top of the largest toe.

"I don't know if I'm going to leave you." Dean says.

"I'm not asking you not to...I'm just tired of it happening." Castiel sighs. "I'm too tired to fight for somebody, I'm already out of fight."

"So that leaves us with what?" Dean asks quietly.

Castiel considers.

"Sex." He says bluntly. "Sleep. Work." He sighs pedantically. "Sunday mornings and dinner arrangements." The doorbell rings. "And food, of course." He slides reluctantly off of the couch and pads towards the door. Dean scrambles after him and reaches the lounge door just before Castiel opens the front door, wallet in hand.

"I...well..." Dean taps his knuckles on the door, leaning on it awkwardly. "I love you too...just so, you know."

Castiel looks at him strangely for a second.

_I never wanted to feel that way again, to feel...grateful to a man for staying with me..._

"I was aware of that Dean." He says softly. "But thank you."

Dean isn't sure whether to call this a win or not.

"I think he's fucked up." Gabriel says around a mouthful of ice-cream later that night, sprawled on Dean's couch.

"Thanks for that." Dean frowns. "Sam, your assessment?"

"He has issues, shit tonnes of issues." Sam says.

"Fan-fucking-tastic." Dean huffs. "Two sex and the city wannabe's on my doorstep and your advice is worth absolutely nothing." He sighs. "I'm going to bed."

As Dean slams his bedroom door, Sam finally turns his eyes to Gabriel.

"Unpause?" he says.

"Unpause." Gabriel agrees.

"What the hell's gotten into you?" Sam hisses.

"Calories." Gabriel whispers. "Glorious, amazing calories."

"So what? You've fallen off the sugar wagon and you're just a dick now?"

"This is what I'm like!" Gabriel exclaims.

"Well I don't like it." Sam snaps. "You're rude, you're moody and you keep making fun of me...find someone else to eat syrup off...I'm done."

Gabriel looks suddenly very serious. "Sammy..."

"No, just...it was fun ok? I can't take it anymore, and you're clearly bored with me." Sam gets up and goes to open the front door. "Let's just...call it what it is, let's say it's over."

Wordlessly, Gabriel leaves the apartment, half melted dish of ice-cream still balanced on the arm of the couch.


	8. Chapter 8

_Dr Who's nearly on, but I thought, since I had enough to post, that I could write the second half of this later – hope you like it. _

Dean should probably care that his brother is miserable. And to be fair, he does, kind of. The only thing is that it's really Sam's own decisions that have made him miserable, and Dean doesn't really know what to do to help matters. Sam kind of just sits on the couch when he's not at work, watching soaps or documentaries at random and eating the detritus of Occupation By Gabriel, (which is to say, various syrups on various bread products, marshmallow fluff, gummy everything and three different kinds of boutique Belgian ice-cream – one of which might have actual gold in it.) Then he goes for a run, sometimes not returning for hours, and comes homes exhausted to calorie load again.

Frankly, Dean can see that Sam is punishing himself for missing Gabriel (who was sort of a dick towards the end, though Dean only noticed a few days before their break-up, having been occupied with Castiel). He just doesn't know what to do about it. He can't even ask anyone for advice, calling up his ex and asking her about relationships does seem a little sociopathic and as for his current boyfriend...

Dean isn't sure that 'healthy expression of emotion' is one of Castiel's strong suits.

For example, Castiel made it plain that Dean could stay with him (if he so wished) over the weekend or for a few days during the week. It made sense as they worked together, as so could travel together come morning.

The first time Dean had stayed over had been a landmark occasion. He'd entered Castiel's home with the knowledge that he wouldn't just be eating and having sex there before going home in the early hours. He was a guest.

Which is probably why he got nervous. He'd never noticed before how breakable, how expensive looking a lot of Castiel's stuff actually was.

That spindly flower vase on the hall table for example – it looked like it was made of mentally suspended virgin tears.

All the furniture was one of a kind, custom made stuff, apparently designed to be pale and silky and thin legged. Liable to be broken into kindling out of sheer shock if someone ever dared to actually sit on anything.

The carpet was cream, the walls were covered in silken paper, also cream, and every available surface had some kind of sculpture or vase or clock on it. All of said treasures were obviously, expensive, rare, too good to even be seen by the likes of him and insanely, opulently, delicate.

Dean had big shoulders, occasionally clumsy hands and uncoordinated legs.

It was like being a snowball in hell.

Or, more accurately, he thinks after some consideration. Like being a really hot bull in an ice sculpture shop.

So he was a little concerned about being in Castiel's home all of a sudden. He reasoned that it was because before Castiel had been his boss, therefore Dean was supposed to be at ease in his home. Out of fear he'd mostly avoided looking at anything, he'd been there for sex and food, that was the limit to his involvement with his surroundings. But now he was a boyfriend, or partner, whichever, and he had concerns.

Concern that was not entirely misplaced, as after an hour of sitting carefully on the sturdiest chair he could spot, far away from any of the glass masterpieces in the drawing room.

The, honest to crap _drawing room._

He stood up too quickly to help Castiel with a tray of wine and the appetisers left by his caterers (how had he not noticed that Castiel used a caterer?) and tripped on a Persian rug, knocking over an abstract porcelain figure of an angel.

Really, he thought, as the angel swan dived onto the floor and broke cleanly in half. If the angel hadn't been on its own plinth, on its own little table, it would have stood a chance of not being brutally dispatched - clearly it wasn't very bright for being so expensive, though Dean was biased against such items as the only 'ornament' he'd ever owned was a stuffed elk head that looked a lot like Sam, and was still wearing panties on its antlers from his first semester at college.

"Sorry." Dean dropped to his knees and picked up the figure. "Oh, crap that's really broken...I...uh...I'll pay for a new one" He turns it over and looks at the bottom. "Shit. Tiffany's? Just...uh..."

"Dean, it really is of no importance." Castiel sets the tray down and takes the pieces of the angel from him stiffly, looking at them for a second before consigning them to what Dean had previously thought was a fancy floor ornamentation, but which was apparently the waste basket.

Though who made a trash can out of marble with silk inserts, he hadn't the faintest idea.

"No, Cas...I'm clumsy, I broke it..."

"It was an accident, and it's not a favourite piece." Castiel mutters, sitting down on the skeletal, velvet draped form of a white couch that appears to be boned with...well, actual bone or ivory or something. The other man frowns at him and Dean sits down, still feeling like a stray dog that's peed on the fresh carpeting of its kind fosterer. "You should feel free to make of this place what you will, while you're here." Castiel points out.

"Yeah, well, I don't want to ruin all your things." Dean says abashedly.

"Eventually I was hoping..." Castiel seems to find the words oddly shaped and unfamiliar, as if he's been asked to speak one of the three languages he isn't fluent in. "I had thought to invite you to live here indefinitely, after perhaps consulting you on the matter" he shifts like a dignitary pausing a long speech. "And besides, they aren't my things."

"You buy this place furnished?" Dean quips, unable or unwilling to consider that Castiel just asked him to live with him.

"They were all of Balthazar's choosing." Castiel shrugs. "Or they came from the home I shared with my previous partner." He wrinkles his face into a subdued expression. "I spent so little time here it was of no consequence what it looked like, as long as it was tasteful."

Something weirdly disturbing occurs to Dean.

"Castiel...do you like, any of this stuff?"

Castiel blinks at him.

"It's perfectly serviceable." He points out. "And comfortable enough."

"Yeah but..." Dean looks around and then points to the weird settee Castiel is sitting on. "You like all this, white and silk and little glass things everywhere? The couch?"

"It's a chaise longue." Castiel corrects without comment.

"Do you like it?" Dean persists.

Castiel seems to think for a moment, even going so far as to look down at the creation of (ivory?) and velvet that he's sitting on, as if he needs reminding of what it looks like.

"...not particularly." He judges, after a moment.

"So why is it still here?" Dean asks, genuinely perplexed by the idea that Castiel, who might actually have more money than God, would keep a couch he didn't like just because he didn't really care about it. Dean doesn't care about furniture really, but he only buys what he likes, something he's had to fight Sam on whenever they've bought anything significant.

"Balth..." Castiel catches himself. "Balthazar, spent a long time looking for the exact material, and the polished yak bone..."

_The fuck_? Dean thinks privately, squinting at the material in question.

"...took eight months to procure and shape as desired. He had to send it to India to be finished." Castiel says, with as much emotion as a curator left in charge of someone else's museum.

"And he didn't take it with him?" Dean's surprise outweighs his sense of propriety for a second.

"He...he never asked for it." Castiel says softly, as if considering now for the first time, the implications of this. "All the things here...he...left them." He says quietly, and Dean sees for a moment that Castiel places himself with this collection of oddities, a pale, interesting thing, that has been replaced with something else, left in a mausoleum of curios.

"Cas..."

"I really hate this couch." Castiel says suddenly, blinking at him like a small, puzzled marsupial.

"Ok...point made." Dean says cautiously.

"I really..." Castiel stands up. "really..." he picks up a glass of red wine. "hate...this couch." He pours the wine in a long drizzle over the cushions, red blotting and blurring over the pale velvet. Dean sits, frozen by the carnage.

Castiel turns to him, and there's no elation, no odd glee to him at this outrage, just a kind of...anger. At himself, at Balthazar...at the contents of his house, which is not his home.

"You know I only decorated one room in this house...my bedroom." Castiel murmurs. "You haven't seen it, it's at the end of the third floor landing...I moved in there when Balthazar left and I...well it hadn't ever been finished, so I chose everything myself." He trails off sadly.

Dean tries not to think about why he hasn't seen Castiel's actually bedroom, or in fact, what the purpose was to the room they've been screwing in since they returned from Paris.

Balthazar's bedroom.

Once Castiel and Balthazar's bedroom.

"Show me." Is what he says, and Castiel jerks his attention to him as if surprised. "Show me your room."

Castiel nods slightly and walks away towards the stairs. Dean follows, leaving the stained couch, chaise-whatever, behind.


	9. Chapter 9

"This is...a big...red...room." Dean says inanely.

To be fair, it's true. The room is large and square, the walls painted a kind of dark...wine-y red. (Which, unbeknownst to Dean, Sam would identify as 'burgundy'.) The sleigh style bed is large and made of dark wood, its sheets and comforter in shades of dark red and brown. A pale fur throw is hanging over one side of the end of the bed, the carpet is red, the curtains are deep gold and all the furniture looks old, sturdy and like it's the kind of stuff you have to have waxed.

Castiel looks over the decor as if seeing it for the first time in a strangers house. Dean glances up and notices that the ceiling is lumpy with designs (mouldings – insists the invisible, inaudible Sam) with a chandelier in the centre.

"I like red" Castiel says simply.

Dean looks again at the walls, compared to the pale silkiness of downstairs, this heavily draped redness is as different as Castiel is from...well, a normal person. It's like being in the bloody, beating heart of the house. Warm and rich and sensual. The whore to the nervous spindly virgin of the drawing room. And yes, Dean does really need to get some proper writing work soon – he's getting metaphor overspill here.

Not that he wants to fuck the room...definitely not.

Maybe just strip off and lie on the bed...maybe rub against the velvet curtains and the plush deep pile carpet. Normal stuff like that.

"Kind of looks like presidential hell." Dean mutters, eliciting a frown from the older man. "In a good way." He reassures him.

Castiel sighs and plonks down on the bed with an unorthodox lack of grace. His long fingers spread on the soft fabric beneath them and he tilts his head back, rolling the sore muscles in his neck and upper back.

After a few seconds of indulgent stretching he looks up at Dean again, eyes slightly closed like a sly cat.

"Come here." He asks, because despite Castiel's occasionally scary presence, now is not one of the times he's giving an order.

Dean goes.

Castiel is a different Castiel to the ones he's met before. Boss Castiel, casual sex Castiel, mournful Castiel, kick ass Castiel.

When Dean comes to stand in front of him, one knee lifting to the bed to press between his dark fabric covered thighs, Castiel leans back and pulls Dean on top of him. They kiss, hungry, excitedly mouthing as Castiel slides a little up the bed with each movement, tugging Dean with him, stripping him from his jacket. Castiel moves impatiently backwards, shirt covered back slipping pleasantly on the silky fabric of the bedspread. Dean's weight settles on top of him and Castiel threads his fingers into the younger man's hair.

The movements of Castiel under him mark the difference between his previous incarnation and this – he's playful, exploratory rather than coolly well travelled and authoritative.

"Dean?" Castiel pulls away to pant.

"Mmm?" Dean presses his kiss swollen lips to the side of Castiel's throat and rakes his teeth lightly over the pulse.

"I want..." Castiel breath comes harsher and Dean backs up a little to see what it is that can have caused Castiel to stumble – Castiel, who once coolly directed him into panties, stockings and handcuffs.

"Anything you want." Dean cups the face of the older man, feeling the pulse flutter under his fingers, noticing for the first time that Castiel's skin is thin and vulnerable.

Castiel leans up and whispers in his ear, oddly solemn and youthful in that tiny modesty. Dean feels his eyes widen as the word sink home.

Well...that's a new one.

They grope their way back downstairs, groping each other, catching at the polished banisters, Castiel's shirt is discarded over the lamp at the end of the stairway, Dean's, somewhere off to the side, cast off over the foyer.

They stand for a moment in the pristine mausoleum that is the downstairs entryway, both looking at the room around them, and through the glass doors to the room beyond it. Room after room after room of trinkets and white silk upholstery.

Castiel places his hands on Dean's shoulders and smoothes them up to his neck, pressing them very close together, chest to chest. The tips of their noses almost touch, humid breath wavering between their mouths.

"Fuck me." Castiel murmurs, confidence in every movement of his lips and teeth.

Dean kisses him once, short and closed-lipped. Tender as he can manage.

He lifts Castiel, feeling clothed legs clamp around his waist as he pushes them up against a wall, sending a print crashing to the floor. Castiel moans softly against Dean's mouth, rubbing against him as they rake at each other fiercely, careening along the wall and scattering small frames, an end table and a tiny silver clock to the ground, where Dean crushes it under foot. Castiel bites Dean's lips red, tasting the raw flesh and clashing back again in a flurry of teeth and tongue, hands and thighs and groin rubbing and clutching at any flesh that comes against them.

The first couch Dean drops them onto, breaks, and so their hurried shucking of clothing and Castiel's first orgasm occur on the broken back of the delicate frame, with Dean half sprawled on the cream carpet, mouth wrapped around the head of Castiel's erection, and the older man thrown back against the overturned lump of upholstered cushion. When Castiel cries out, snapping a leg from the couch one handed, Dean backs off, letting Castiel's orgasm overtake him and coaxing each flow of ejaculate from him with his hand. They're both sticky, sweating and spattered with come, fast growing tacky on their heated skins.

Castiel pushes forwards like an uncoiling spring, pushing Dean down to the floor some distance away, on a pale swatch of Persian carpet. They rub together here until Dean groans and shoots over Castiel's stomach and rapidly recovering groin. The carpet beneath them is mussed and streaked with clumping fluids, so they struggle upwards, staggering, mouths intent on each other, knocking over a plinth and sending a vase of lilies and a huge amount of water over the wine stained couch.

Castiel is grinning when Dean pulls him to the floor.

They reach the less frenzied stage of coupling a short time later, no longer tearing at each other, but grasping, caressing. Castiel takes Dean over the back of a plush ottoman, so insubstantial that it slides forwards with each thrust, until Dean's clutching at the velvet, feeling his dick ruck sticky trails across the fabric as he moves, trying to keep still and gain some leverage. Unfortunately his position isn't a stable one, and he's unable to do anything in the way of pushing back or bucking against the furious friction of Castiel's cock as the other man writhes breathlessly on top of him. Dean clings to the ottoman, unable to do anything other than feel Castiel's pace increase, thrusts going deeper and harder. Unable to do much other than just, take it.

Castiel's laboured breathing gives way to a series of deep groans into Dean's shoulder, Dean's not anywhere near done yet, unable to touch himself in the absence of Castiel's hand.

"Are you..." Dean manages, before a hand is roughly shoved between his cock and the ruined ottoman, rubbing and gripping so tightly that he rolls his eyes shut with a yelp and focuses on not coming right away.

"Al-most." Castiel pants, words tripping up as he buries his face in the sweat slicked skin of Dean's back.

"Cas..."

"Shut up." Castiel growls desperately, then groans as he loses it, casting hot fluid into Dean's body as he jerks his hips up, hand snatching Dean's orgasm from him with a sudden twist.

Panting, in a heap of wet flesh and damp breathing, they shiver, coming down from their exertions. Castiel slides off of Dean and spreads out on the floor, closing his eyes and stretching languidly, bruised and immensely tired. Dean joins him when he's done easing his back and glances around them at the mess and destruction.

Sometimes, sleeping with someone who had as many issues as Castiel seemed to have? It had advantages.

The next morning, Castiel's cleaning lady stood, shocked and appalled, in the centre of the ruined downstairs rooms.

Dean was perched on the stairs, eating a pop tart off of one of the last few unbroken dishes (they'd had a busy night) Castiel stood, seemingly unaffected, in the centre of the room, adjusting his cufflinks.

At the cleaner's timid question as to what caused the catastrophe that had decimated the room. Castiel looked up calmly, as if just noticing the damage.

"I'm remodelling." He replied airily.

Turning to Dean he inclined his head to the door.

"I think our car is here."

Together they climb into the shiny black town car, and once secluded behind it's black partition, Castiel, settling into the upholstery, sighs at the ache in his spine.

"Tonight, we should sleep in the bed." He mutters.

Dean glances at him, but chooses not to comment; instead he lays his hand carefully on top of Castiel's.

Castiel moves his fingers, threading their hands together.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean has a single voicemail from Gabriel –

_How is he?_

That's it. Three words. Several hours later, when he has yet to find the time to call Gabriel back, another message appears.

_Not that I care or anything._

Dean sighs and picks up the phone, dialling the number for Castiel's former first assistant. Gabriel, presumably as a mark of how he _really_ doesn't care, waits until the middle of the second ring to pick up, sounding like he's just leapt across the room.

"Gabriel, just call him." Dean begs, in lieu of 'hello'.

"Never!" Gabriel proclaims melodramatically. There's a long pause as Dean waits for the inevitable...

"Does he miss me?" Gabriel asks in a small voice.

"Like a monkey misses the organ grinder." Dean promises. "He's just ploughing through all the things you left in the kitchen and going for runs."

Gabriel sighs. Then, "Hold up, even the chocolate lube?"

Dean feels slightly sick.

"Which was..."

"Red tube in the salad drawer."

Dean presses his fingers to his temple. "No, because I ate that on my oatmeal this morning."

Silence.

"Bleh." Gabriel says unhelpfully.

Dean chokes down his bile and tries to focus on the issue at hand.

"Just...call my brother, tell him you're sorry for being an ass and then offer him make-up sex." Dean winces at the unfairness that he is the one giving this talk.

"He won't even talk to me." Gabriel insists.

"Well, make him talk to you." Dean says unhelpfully.

There's a long, dangerous silence.

"Huh." Gabriel says thoughtfully, then hangs up.

Dean stares at the phone, wondering what he's just unleashed on the world.

"Dean." Castiel calls from the main office, walking towards Dean's desk even as he reels off - "I'm going to my lunch appointment, while I'm gone, get the numbers for last quarter, Uriel on the phone, fresh starbucks and the proofs from yesterdays shoot..." He picks up his coat and slides gracefully into it, pausing as Dean hands him his briefcase. Blues eyes trace the lines of Dean's face for a second before he leans forwards and kisses him lightly on the mouth leaning in fast but pulling away slow.

"Take some time for lunch." He advises, softly.

"Will do." Dean hides his surprise at the caring interlude. "I'll see you later."

Castiel leaves Dean standing there, with a low thrum of warmth in his veins.

It's all started to shift to a different locus, this thing with Castiel. They sleep in 'the red room' and breakfast downstairs – breakfasts which they cook themselves as opposed to having them brought in by the caterer. The ruined pearlescent splendour of the downstairs rooms is steadily being replaced. Castiel made a mood board (whatever that was) and spent a long time in his office, looking at it and asking Dean's opinion on serge verses umber. He seems wondrously unsure now that he has the chance to overhaul his environment.

Dean still doesn't really care about throw pillows. But he did pitch in on the discussion of whether to install what Castiel tactfully described as 'a moodily lit room with wall mounted chains and scotch guarded floors'.

He came down on the side of 'pro bondage dungeon' Mainly because Balthazar wouldn't let Castiel have one, the way most wives wouldn't allow an indoor basket ball hoop or a go-cart track. But he had to be 'anti painting it yellow in defiance of tradition' – too weird by far.

There's also normal stuff to consider like, couches and carpets and whether Castiel even wants end tables. All of which Castiel is labouring with like he's actually building a house instead of merely furnishing one.

Dean's getting used to the moments, when, spread out and naked on top of Castiel's writhing body – the other man squints at the ceiling as if he's trying to decide between crown mouldings and coving.

Oh yes, Dean's learnt the words – he's probably qualified to be an interior designer by now. But somehow it's worth it to see Castiel light up whenever he gets the 'feel' of the room exactly right. To have the place transformed from a house to a home over a period of weeks.

Dean jots down his to-do list and pops down to the canteen for lunch. Things are changing, doubtless they'll continue, but they're changing for the better.

He just wishes he knew where they were headed, sometimes.

Sam's habits aren't known to a lot of people. Dean knows for example, that Sam eats raisin bread every time he gets breakfast on the way into work. He knows that Sam washes his sheets every three weeks and folds them just so to be stacked, three deep, in the linen chest. Prefers the big couch to the recliner and he only sits at the dining table when he's reading.

Sam also only orders pizza when he's depressed.

This is a fact known to only two people.

Not only does he order pizza when he's depressed, he orders it from the same restaurant, in the interval between Desperate Housewives and Gilmore Girls, his standard 'depressed evening in' television fare.

So, when the knock comes on the door, Sam picks up his wallet and approaches the spy hole, spotting the large white box just outside his door. It's all a part of his routine.

However, if there was ever a person that was born into the job of ruining routines – Gabriel would probably steal that person's job, and possibly his car as well.

Sam opens the door and sees before him the last man he expected to see. Gabriel, brandishing a white pizza box and wearing a...

"What the hell is in your face?" Sam asks moodily, securing the large, dark moustache with a glare so intense a lesser piece of facial hair might have withered and fallen from its place.

"I'm sorry?" Gabriel says in an appalling Italian accent.

"Gabriel." Sam sighs.

Balancing the pizza on one palm, Gabriel holds up a hand. "Mario." He corrects. "You want ze pizza or not?"

Sam gives him a withering look.

"It's a Chicago, deep pan Gabriel...nothing Italian about it."

Gabriel looks put out.

"Are you still going to let me in?"

Sam rolls his eyes, but steps away from the door.

"Take off the moustache." He demands, watching Gabriel open the pizza box and remove a slice.

"You love it." Gabriel says, through a mouthful of pizza.

Sam takes a slice and sits down on the couch.

Gabriel looks at him thoughtfully.

"Ask me when I last had sugar." He says, finally. "Go on, ask me."

"Why?"

Gabriel waves a hand encouragingly.

"Ok, fine – when?"

"Not since I last saw you." Gabriel says proudly. He chews thoughtfully on his pizza. "It's not the same when you're not licking it off of someone you..." he frowns, looks up. "I was an ass...I'm sorry." He says seriously. "Forgive me, beat me...I don't care, just let me come back."

Sam looks at him sceptically. "You won't call me a moose again?"

"No."

"Or say I look like a constipated Pekinese?"

"Never."

"Or stand next to me in the bathroom, making cracks about my..."

"I won't say or do, anything offensive." Gabriel promises. "Unless you want me to." He adds with a grin.

Sam stares at him a minute longer.

"I'll get you a plate." He says softly, walking towards the kitchen.

Gabriel takes it as the almost acceptance of an almost apology.


	11. Chapter 11

Things are rolling along at quite a pace for them, and, whilst Dean doesn't want to jinx things – he has to think that they are going exceptionally well.

The drawing room, for example, is now a rich blue colour, with a sumptuous pale silver carpet and large, sturdy couches. The other rooms in the house are each decorated as well, ranging from the dark green kitchen to the canary yellow and black bathroom on the third floor and the...moodily lit 'intimacy suite' in the basement with its dangerously vermillion back wall.

Castiel is as changed as his environment, he's almost a dervish of excitement at work, verging on worryingly affectionate in and out of bed and has installed Dean in his home with an ease indicative of an emotionally healthy person.

On a long overdue visit to his apartment to pick some things up, Dean discovers that Sam and Gabriel are also sickeningly in love once more. Although it takes him a while to translate the sight of his brother, naked save for an apron and a fake moustache, standing in a flour and pizza sauce covered kitchen beside Gabriel, who was at least clothed. (If a ravaged pizza delivery uniform could be classed as clothing.)

Little shitty blue birds of happiness are in fact coming out of the woodwork all over the place. So Dean could hardly be blamed for his sudden, heart attack of anguish over the letter he found, half drafted on Castiel's desktop computer.

He wasn't snooping when he found it, he was after all, Castiel's assistant and apt to need things that were stored on the main pc hard drive. In this instance he needed to get at some of the schedule notes for the upcoming party in honour of Mode's successful half year in business. Instead, he found a file labelled simply 'Dean Redundancy' and so he clicked on it, before his brain could communicate with his hand.

_Mr Winchester_

_The management of Mode__TM __regrets to inform you that due to streamlining of the workforce and personal lapses in judgement that can continue no longer, you are to be let go. _

_An excellent reference will of course be provided and a generous severance package is in the midst of being formalised. Expect to hear from the accountancy department within a week of your termination._

_Sincerely, _

_Castiel Novak. _

Dean stares blankly at the words for another half minute. He's supposed to be finalising the celebration of the magazine's success, but apparently he's being fired because they're cutting out expenses? That right there made no sense. That sounded like...company drivel, expected to placate him. But the 'personal lapses'? that sounded like Castiel – loud and clear – 'I made a mistake and I want you gone' but in corporate douchebag –ese.

How could he be so cold? Dean huffed humourlessly at that, Castiel was to cold what the sun was to fire. He practically invented the ice queen routine.

Parts of his brain wanted to believe that it was some of the partners who wanted Dean gone, who thought he was inappropriate and a waste of Castiel's concentration. But he shook the idea off – no one could make Castiel do anything. He only gave ground if he was planning on moving anyway.

He was laying him off.

And he hadn't had the decency to tell him to his face - he was just going to send him a letter.

What then? Would they still be together? Only with Dean staying home all day in the (freshly decorated) cavernous town house? Gathering dust amongst Castiel's other chosen furnishings, waiting for the boss to come home so he could unwind with a glass of scotch and a round or two with the 'lover'?

Not happening.

Dean deleted the words on screen, and typed in their place.

_Mr Novak,_

_Consider me advised of the staffing changes and fully aware of my new status as an ex-employee. _

_Please consider our arrangement similarly, terminated._

_I'll return the stick I hauled out of your ass, and pick up my stuff later. _

_Sincerely, _

_Dean Winchester. _

With that message glowing on the screen, and the cursor thrumming politely at its end, waiting for the next sentence, Dean goes to his desk, packs up his stuff, and exits the building. Castiel wasn't due back from his lunch meeting for an hour. That gave him plenty of time to get over to Sam's and get hammered before Castiel found the letter.

Fucking jinxes.

All the way over to his old apartment his mind ran in circles, what if Castiel didn't mean it? What if it was an old file? What if...What if...

But he knows.

He knows Castiel, how unpredictable, how intelligent and detached and downright mercenary he can be.

He can't believe he let himself believe that one drunken fuck and a string of meaningless affections could break through that shell of ice.

He bangs on the door and Sam answers, in the background Gabriel is flipping pancakes, spotting them with chocolate chips to make pictures.

"Hey...shouldn't you be at work?" Gabriel asks before Sam has a chance to. Gabriel had been remarkably good natured about being fired during the takeover.

"I got fired." Dean manages, sitting at the kitchen island and pouring himself a glass of scotch from the bottle he'd taken from the cabinet.

Sam and Gabriel exchange glances.

"You want some pancakes?" The shorter man offers. Dean nods.

"Castiel...fired you?" Sam asks, sitting down opposite him. "Did he break up with you first or..."

"This morning he asked me what colour the kitchen tiles should be...and he brought me coffee in bed." Dean says, hating himself for believing such small things meant that Castiel ever cared for him. He was just an assistant, someone to make decisions and provide a warm body. Appeased with small gestures and easily manipulated. After all, Castiel had been burnt so many times by people he actually loved. What have that happen again when he could scare up a quickie just by being the boss.

Sam pats him on the back. Gabriel passes him a plateful of pancakes. The top one has a smiley face, the rest are alarmingly accurate renderings of dicks, the chocolate chips already melting.

Sam shoots his boyfriend an accusing glare.

"I'd already made those ones, besides, the heart ones would have been worse, given that they are pity pancakes." He winces and glances at Dean. "Sorry."

"Not the worst thing to happen today." Dean assures him.

Dean's phone starts ringing, he turns it off.

As he finishes his pancakes, the house phone starts to ring. He unplugs it.

He doesn't check his emails, just deletes them wholesale and signs out for good to avoid the blips of incoming messages.

He lies on his bed checking the want ads and searching the internet for writing jobs.

New job, new start.

He wishes he could believe that.

Sam plugs the phone in again after a week of silence, within twenty minutes it rings and Dean hears his brother's voice through the wall.

"Stop calling, asshole."

When he emerges to see what's going on Sam looks sheepish.

"Wrong number."

Dean remembers Castiel saying that he wouldn't fight for him. He wonders why he's still calling, and realises that in all probability he's probably pissed. He isn't looking to fight for him, just to fight over...well, losing control, having his careful plan destroyed.

Dean feels a little stab of vicious, poisonous glee at that. He got there first, he's the one who ripped out the fragile veins and arteries that connected them together. He's in control right now, and Castiel can rot in his mausoleum of a house, raging that he didn't get the last word.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean opens the door a fortnight into his new unemployment to get the newspaper. That's how his mornings run now, he gets his own coffee, checks the want ads, goes for a run and then goes back to bed.

Only today, he opens the door and finds himself staring into the dark circles that are bordering Castiel's eyes.

Castiel himself is bundled in a large, dark greatcoat, making him look paler than ever. He looks both surprised, relieved and angry to see Dean, and Dean's pissed and ecstatic right back. Though it is only eight in the morning, so he's still kind of squinting and looking ruffled and tired in his grey sweats and...

He realises he's wearing the shirt that he'd donated to Castiel's sleeping wardrobe. Gabriel and Sam had retrieved it for him from the town house, they had found the box of things, neatly folded and stored in a box, with a note that Dean hadn't yet brought himself to read.

So, yeah, he was losing points right there. You can't storm away from a lover and refuse to see them, and still keep that edge of righteousness when they see you've been sleeping in a shirt that smells like them.

Castiel is frozen on the step, almost literally, as the weather is incredibly cold. Both of their mouths exude white plumes of breath as they stand there in the chill.

"I've been waiting for four hours." Castiel says, voice carefully monotone. "May I come in?"

Dean doesn't want Castiel to come in. He wants Castiel to go away. He wants Castiel to climb into bed with him. He wants to make him coffee to combat the cold. He wants to swear him up a storm and kick him off his doorstep. He wants, and there are too many things to hang on to – and his anger is a bitter thing in him that wants him to turn Castiel away, no matter how much it will hurt.

Dean steps aside and lets Castiel in. His anger and pride war with him, it hurts to give ground, to falter in his steady march towards miserable vindication.

Castiel stands in the living room in his dark coat, looking like death.

"You didn't accept my calls." Castiel states.

Dean, at a disadvantage in his sleepwear, refuses to be beaten any further.

"I didn't want to hear anything from you." He says evenly. "I still don't."

Castiel looks down for a second like an admonished child, and the gesture is so out of character that Dean feels a spike of worry. What have the intervening weeks of loneliness done to Castiel?

"Then why let me in?" Castiel asks.

"Because you looked pathetic." Dean bites out. "And I'd like to plug my phone back in without you being on the other end of it."

Castiel flinches.

"I just wanted to talk to you." He says quietly. "I didn't mean to..."

"You fired me." Dean says, mainly to reassert that this is all Castiel's fault.

"I was going to fire you." Castiel corrects. "And then you left."

"So I beat you to it." Dean insists. "You wanted me gone, you wanted me to leave..."

"What I wanted was for you to get your severance cheque." Castiel says, finally, a trace of heat creeping into his voice.

Unfortunately, Dean doesn't understand what Castiel is saying.

"Great. How considerate of you." He snaps.

Castiel looks...well, if Dean didn't know him better, he'd say Castiel looked like he was about to cry.

But that was impossible. Ice men. Tin men. Don't feel, don't bleed and they definitely didn't cry.

"If you'd quit, it would be impossible for me to give you a good reference." Castiel says shakily. "you wouldn't have gotten any severance pay and your next employer..."

"My next..." Dean laughs bitterly. "Cas, it's unlikely anyone is going to hire me, not now."

"You have an interview today!" Castiel raises his voice in an attempt to steady it. "You have an interview with Auto Nation...I arranged it, weeks ago."

Dean just stares at him.

"It was supposed to be..." Castiel sniffs, a sort of watery, dead smile curling the edges of his mouth. "It was going to be a surprise."

Dean shakes his head slowly. "Why would you do that?"

"Because you didn't want to work with me." Castiel raises a hand to gesture at him, as if it's obvious. "You never, wanted to work with me...or at Runway, or Mode." He pulls a letter out of his pocket and drops it onto the coffee table – it's a letter from the editor in chief of Auto Nation, the logo is unmistakable. "This is what you wanted to do...and, I thought it was selfish of me, to keep you at a magazine that you really didn't want to work for...in a job where you'd never get to write anything, and you had to feign interest in play suits and deniers..."

"You wrote that letter." Dean glowers at him, though his mind is spinning. "You were going to send me that...cold little note to say I was fired? How did you expect me to react?"

"I was planning to tell you beforehand." Castiel snaps heatedly. "I am not so inconsiderate...but I had the partners to appease, and they would not have looked favourably on me giving you a substantial severance package, as well as negotiating a job offer." Castiel hides his vulnerability well, but now that Dean has seen it, he can't un-see it – like a magic eye picture it's been drawn out and the collection of random tics and gestures cannot resolve themselves back into obscurity now that he's seen the mess of a man that they make up.

Castiel flinches away when Dean steps towards him. He fixes him with a stare as empty and dark as a well.

"You left me." He says, like he can't understand it, like he can't move past it. "I came back and you were..."

Dean knows.

He was just gone.

He left.

The cardinal sin against Castiel – to gain his love and then destroy him with it.

"I'm so sorry Cas...I..." he winces at the platitude. "I thought you were trying to get rid of me..."

Castiel's jaw sets like that of an innocent detecting a lie in an elder.

"You could have asked me." He grits out. "Do I appear so...spiteful to you, that I would do something like that? So unreachable that you couldn't pick up a damn phone and call me?"

He's never seen Castiel this angry before.

"Answer me." Castiel demands, then seems to realise exactly how he sounds, how he must sound on a daily basis. His jaw clicks as he closes his mouth.

But Dean wants to answer him.

He just can't, because Castiel is terrifying, and more important than he will ever be, rich enough to buy his apartment and have it ground down to line his driveway, cold enough to do it all without regret.

Castiel can hurt him with a single gesture, a thoughtless word and Dean's emotional state can be destroyed in an instant.

And Dean's never been good with emotional speeches.

When he jerks across the space between them and kisses Castiel, the other man whines deep in his throat, as if this is an unsatisfactory answer, as if it doesn't put any of his fears aside. But his hands still clutch at Dean as they press together, finding a wall and slithering down it to hold onto each other and snatch the air from each other's lungs.

Dean tugs back long enough to voice the thought that's battering against the inside of his skull.

"You weren't supposed to fight for me."

Castiel's hand on his neck shifts, the thumb stroking the hollow of his throat as his eyes sear down to the tangle of thoughts and hormones that Dean's brain currently consists of.

"You weren't supposed to be worth it." He rasps, pressing back against him with the need of a drowning man. They wrap themselves together on the floor, Dean shoving at Castiel's heavy coat until it lands on the carpet beneath them, tugging up Castiel's shirt as pale fingers pull at his own T-shirt.

A sharp cough breaks them up.

"Dude, mid-morning – kinda inappropriate." Sam bitches, managing to sound aggrieved even though he's only in sweats and a T-shirt so small it has to belong to Gabriel (as it reads 'The small package that good things come in'.) Gabriel himself appears behind him, wearing the green comforter from Sam's bed.

"Castiel, I'm surprised at you." Gabriel chides, then squeaks and darts back into the bedroom at Castiel's resultant glare.

Castiel frowns.

"Why is everyone afraid of me?" He says, as if genuinely mystified.

Dean wonders what it must be like to be feared and loathed and respected – just for being your own, emotionally stunted self.

"Because you're special." He sighs. "C'mon, I'll make you some coffee, maybe some pancakes." He hauls Castiel to his feet. "Gabriel taught me how to put pictures on them."

Castiel frowns, but there's a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Dean barely thinks about his upcoming interview at all.


	13. Chapter 13

_A Letter from the Editor,_

_A season for all things is perhaps, the most greatly touted phrase of our age. We accept the passing of such seasons, our time to be born, our time to die, with supposed placidity. _

_It can be assumed that the glorifiers of that phrase do not work in fashion._

_Here there is a season for all things, each as brief and unforgiving as a micro-mini, each with its own requirements and punishing schedule. If you outlive your season there are any number of people waiting to inform you that your time is over, that camel is no longer chic, and that you are too old to be participating in their world. _

_It has been said by 'those people' whoever they are, that I am too old to be editor in chief of this magazine._

_Like those who say the trench coat went out of style ten years ago, these people are wrong. _

_It is however, the end of my season, and I am incredibly grateful that it came at a time of my choosing, a time in which I am ready to set aside my controlling interest of the company and retire myself to the slower realms of business. _

_In short, I am glad that I can now acquire some comfortable clothing, and sample the delights of sugar, cream and domesticity more fully than I have done for years. _

_This is, I'm sure, unorthodox for this column, as I usually have an intern write it for me. But I took the time for this particular issue, the celebration of Mode's unparalleled success against its competitors, to indulge myself in introspection and metaphor._

_Little remains to be said, and so in the remaining space I would like to congratulate my unwary successor. I apologise for the secrecy, but I was assured by my significant other that is would be 'hilarious' if I were to announce it in this way._

_So, congratulations Gabriel. _

_This year you shall definitely get to go to Paris._

Sam raises his eyebrows and looks over at his boyfriend, still curled in the foetal position on the bed next to him.

"Huh." He says, looking down at the page again. "so...this is a good thing, right?"

Gabriel bursts upright from the mattress.

"It's a trap!" he exclaims, "It's...way too nice to be him...but..." he grins wildly. "If I get to be editor in chief, at Mode? That's. Awesome." He practically vibrates with excitement. "First issue? 'The Fall of Runway."

"Isn't that a little petty?"

"Castiel couldn't be petty – but I can...it'll be like my retirement gift to him." Gabriel waves excitedly. "I'm going to title it – 'Suck it Balthazar – We knew he'd win'."

Sam sighs, wondering if Castiel knows what he's unleashed upon the world by making Gabriel's ambitions a reality.

Though, knowing what he does of Dean's post-retirement plans for his former boss...Sam doesn't think he'll mind.

Or even notice.


End file.
